Part-time DJ in court over alleged iTunes swindle

A part-time DJ from Wolverhampton sold more tracks than Madonna after fraudsters downloaded his music from iTunes using stolen credit cards, a court heard today (March 21).

Denver White appeared on the iTunes chart after thousands of stolen credit cards were used to buy his music. White, who goes by the name DJ Denver, is allegedly involved in the scam alongside 11 others.

Prosecutor Helen Malcolm QC told the court: "It was fraud on both iTunes and Amazon and, between them, these companies have lost between £750,000 and £1million".

The gang behind the scam allegedly used up to 24 laptops, loaded with trace blocking software, to use the stolen credit cards to buy music by White and other artists between January 2008 and June 2009.

White's music had been uploaded to iTunes and Amazon through SongCast, CD Baby and Tunecore. The jury heard that after the fraud had been discovered, royalty payments were stopped and White's music was removed from the site and £113,000 was withheld.

Miss Malcolm continued: "Shortly after they were stopped, Tunecore started to get a number of calls and emails from a man calling himself Daniel Thompson demanded outstanding royalties. What he did not know was that Tunecore knew there was a fraud and they were in touch with US law enforcement. Tunecore hoped to persuade him to identify himself, by persuading him to come to New York to collect his royalties and offered him free air tickets."

She added: "At that stage Thompson said that the tickets would have to be sent in the name of Denver White. He gave Denver White's real address for the tickets to be posted to and (this) led authorities to uncover all 11 defendants."